The Last Plantagenets (19 page)

D
URING this summer which saw the reconciliation between the king and John of Gaunt, and very little else to the credit of anyone in particular, there died a man who deserves more attention in the annals of the day than he is usually accorded. First as an alderman and then as lord mayor of London, John Philipot had played a prominent and courageous part in public affairs. Unlike William Walworth, who also played a courageous part, there are no circumstances to be glossed over in his career.

When the Grocers Company of London was formed in 1345 by the union of the spicerers and pepperers, Philipot was a charter member. He soon became wealthy and was returned by London as a member of Parliament. In that capacity he stood out against the efforts of the Lancastrian party to gain control and he was spokesman for the deputation which waited on the very old and ill Edward III to explain the riots in London against Duke John and his followers.

His first great exploit was in 1377, shortly after the accession of Richard to the throne. The initiative in the Hundred Years War had been taken over by the enemy across the Channel. The French ships of war were ravaging the English coast. A party of men-at-arms landed and captured the Isle of Wight. Things came to a serious juncture when a Scot named Mercer, in command of a fleet of French, Scottish, and Spanish ships, sailed boldly into Scarborough and captured all the English vessels there.

Philipot waited for the heads of the nation to act. Nothing was done. A strange apathy seemed to have settled on the nation. When it became certain that there would be no official action, John Philipot decided to take things into his own hands. At his personal expense he assembled
some English ships of war with the necessary supplies and equipment, recruited a thousand men, and set out in pursuit of the marauding squadron.

He was spectacularly successful, overtaking Mercer and giving him a sound drubbing. As a result, he recovered all the English ships and captured fifteen Spanish vessels as well. This was the kind of boldness and enterprise which had marked the earlier stages of the war with France and had won so many great victories. The nation responded with wild enthusiasm to the exploit of the bold grocer.

But this enthusiasm was not felt in the higher reaches of the social structure. Most of the barons said openly that Philipot, a commoner and a civilian, had no right to act thus on his own responsibility. The Earl of Stafford took it on himself to confront the amateur admiral and complain of his conduct.

“My lord earl,” answered the alderman, “if the nobles of England had not left the country open to invasion, it would not have been necessary for me to interfere.”

King Richard had been delighted with Philipot’s success and so had to bear a share of the disapproval of the baronage. He was openly referred to as the “King of London.”

The city responded by electing Philipot lord mayor for the years 1378 and 1379. In that important office he proceeded to break precedent by many progressive steps. The stench of London streets was proverbial and Philipot had them thoroughly cleaned. Levying a special tax of five pence on each house, he raised enough to dredge and cleanse the city ditch which had always been the recipient of household filth. Another measure he undertook was the erection of two high stone towers on opposite banks of the Thames below London Bridge, which enabled the city to suspend a chain across the river when there was danger of invasion. The patriotic Philipot paid the cost of one tower out of his own pocket.

He was with the king during the Peasants’ Revolt and was one of four citizens knighted at Clerkenwell Fields after the killing of Wat Tyler. Granted the right of coat armor, he was given a pension of forty pounds a year for his loyalty and zeal. There were still plenty of dissentients, however. When John of Northampton became mayor he deposed Philipot from his place as an alderman. It was supposed that this action was part of a campaign to lessen the influence of the trade guilds but it seems more likely the result of personal animus.

And now this highly admirable citizen came to the end of his days in his house in Langbourne Ward. His will, which was a generous one, left some lands in the city to be held in perpetual trust for the relief
of any thirteen poor people to be designated by the board. London gave the name of Philpot Lane to the street on which his house had stood.

It seems unfortunate that no balladeer saw fit to immortalize him in a legend as unforgettable as that in which a poor apprentice named Dick Whittington, running away from his master, heard in the sound of Bow bells the words,

The real Richard Whittington, who was a mercer and acquired great wealth, was a young member of the aldermanic board in the days of Sir John Philipot.

R
OBERT de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was fifteen years old when Richard became king. He was not a Piers Gaveston, a Robert Carr, nor a George Villiers, to mention a few of the young men who won royal favor by their charm. He seems to have been lacking in that quality, a rather plain stripling, without any particular degree of talent, ambitious without the qualities or the energy to warrant his pretensions, selfish, unreliable, and grasping. But the ten-year-old Richard seems to have picked him as a friend from the beginning.

It is said that Sir Simon Burley had a hand in the role that de Vere assumed, having been generously treated by the youthful earl in the matter of a Hereford manor. But a preference on Burley’s part would not suffice to explain the favor that the king proceeded to display. De Vere was given the custody of royal castles and the profitable wardship of heirs. He was given properties and hereditary offices and was made a member of the privy council against parliamentary advice. He became a member of the Garter, ahead of scores of candidates with much better claims.

The critics through the period of the minority were strongly against many of the advisers selected by the king. They granted the knightly qualities of Sir Simon Burley but resented his rapid rise from shabby gentility to affluence. They could not deny the ability of Michael de la Pole, but he was a commoner and they could not stomach his advancement in the royal confidence. But for Robert de Vere there was nothing good to be said. He was of impeccable descent but he lacked all the qualities which men who stand behind a king should possess.

Two years after the charges were brought against John of Gaunt at
Salisbury, the French king landed an army in Scotland. An army of defense was hastily organized and Richard took command himself, with all his uncles around him to lend advice, and Robert de Vere for good measure.

The Scots followed their usual defensive tactics. When Richard crossed the border on August 6, 1385, the Scots fell back, leaving the road to Edinburgh open. While the English took possession of that city, the Scots made counterraids into Westmoreland and Cumberland and ravaged the country thoroughly and savagely. The young king did not know how to come to grips with this elusive foe. John of Gaunt urged him to advance beyond the Firth of Forth and compel the Scottish forces to drop back for defensive purposes. This was sound advice but the king listened instead to the indolent and untrained de Vere. That young gentleman pointed out that the Scots were behind the royal army and that the English position was becoming untenable. Get back before it was too late, advised the timorous de Vere. To the chagrin of the uncles and of every experienced soldier in the army, this course was adopted. Soured by this adolescent decision, the army retreated back across the border, leaving Edinburgh in flames and finding in the northern counties the smoking ruins that the Scots had left behind them. As usual the campaign had been a complete and sorry failure.

Another member of the inner circle of favorites had ridden in the royal train to Scotland, John Holland, the half brother who had taken it on himself to murder the Carthusian friar at Salisbury. On the march north he became the central figure in a still more violent episode. One of his squires was attacked by an archer in the train of Hugh, the son of the Earl of Stafford. In an army made up of forces brought into the field by members of the nobility, such quarrels were common. Holland did not wait for any explanation, however. He started out that night for the Stafford camp in a surly temper. It happened that Ralph, a Stafford son, decided at the same time to wait on Holland in an effort to make amends. Their paths crossed in the darkness.

“Who rides abroad at this late hour?” demanded Holland, reining in his horse.

“Ralph of Stafford,” was the answer, the youth not having recognized the voice of the king’s half brother.

Without waiting for another word, the surly Holland drew his sword and lunged out into the darkness. The blade pierced the young knight’s side and he fell from his saddle, mortally wounded. Without waiting to take any steps about the body, the killer turned and rode back to his own camp. He did not seem to have any compunction about what he had done. The brother of a king could do no wrong.

But Richard took a different view. Fond as he was of these hotheaded older sons of his mother, he realized that he could not condone unprovoked murder. The Earl of Stafford demanded that the vicious Holland be made to pay for his murderous attack and it was clear that the nobility were back of him. Suddenly realizing that being half brother to a king was not a warrant for wanton murder, Holland fled into sanctuary in the church of St. John of Beverley. The king’s first hostile move was an order for the confiscation of all Holland’s properties.

Word of what had happened reached the ears of the murderer’s mother. Finding that Richard was not prepared to throw the cloak of royal immunity over his guilty half brother, she sent frantic messages north, begging for mercy. Richard remained adamant. The queen mother’s condition had been growing worse and this blow was more than she could stand. She died in August of that year while her royal son was leading his army across the Scottish border and before receiving any definite word of her other son’s fate.

The punishment finally imposed on Holland was light. He was ordered to provide chantries where Masses could be said in perpetuity for the soul of Ralph of Stafford, two to be stationed at the spot where the murder was committed and the third at his grave. In a very short space of time the confiscated properties were returned to him. He was permitted to marry Elizabeth, a daughter of John of Gaunt, and years later was made Duke of Exeter. The reason for the young king’s leniency is, of course, a matter of conjecture. He undoubtedly was influenced by the affection he had always felt for his older and lordly half brother and it seems equally clear that his belief in the infallibility of kings convinced him that Holland was above punishment. It is quite possible also that his grief for his mother swayed him to a belated attitude of mercy. One thing is certain: the family of the slain knight never forgave John Holland and became savagely critical of the king.

In the hope no doubt of placating his troublesome family, Richard made his uncle Edmund the Duke of York and Thomas the Duke of Gloucester. To avoid any confusion of identities in the minds of readers it will be advisable to continue use of the name Woodstock in connection with Thomas, particularly as he will continue to play a prominent part in the annals of this stormy and unhappy reign.

Richard realized that he had not covered himself with glory in Scotland, but the failure of his efforts in the field did not persuade him to take a common-sense view of the need for reform in the administrative machinery he had set up. When the faults of Robert de Vere were dinned into his ears, his only response was to pile new honors on his favorite. Unfortunately he thought of Ireland as a suitable field for his friend.

Conditions in that country were growing increasingly bad. The English had become little more than settlers, confining themselves to a section of the country which continued to shrink. There was a belt of land about Dublin, comprising the counties of Dublin, Meath, Kildare, and Louth, which was called the Pale. For some time the English had been staying exclusively within the Pale, even though its limits were growing narrower all the time. The Irish people, living beyond the Pale, continued to do as they pleased and paid no attention to English laws. The line between Irish and English was not as great as it would become later (particularly in the reign of Henry VI when the English were compelled by law to shave their upper lips to mark the distinction), but it was tightly drawn. The feeling had become so high that it was no longer a felony for an Englishman to kill one of the natives. All he had to do was to claim that the victim was a thief. It was not surprising that the English settlers had been steadily dropping back to the comparative safety of the city of Dublin. “The little place” was the term they now used for the Pale.

Around the limits of the Pale the Irish leaders kept close watch and ward. The most active of them was one Art MacMurrough and, when he died in 1377, his son who was also called Art took up the work. Art the Second, twenty years of age, who rode without saddle or bridle and whose voice was a high-pitched and vibrant summons to battle, proved more belligerent than his father. He married an Anglo-Irish wife named Eliza de Veele, a lady of property, but this alliance did not lead to better relations with the English. The viceroy of the moment in Dublin decided that the fair Eliza had violated the law in marrying the handsome MacMurrough. When her lands in Norragh were confiscated, Art declared open war.

From all parts of Ireland came assistance. The O’Briens, the O’Tooles, the O’Dempseys came marching to Art’s assistance and it began to look as though the Pale would shrink to the vanishing point.

In London it was realized that a strong hand was needed in Ireland. The solution that Richard found was the appointment of de Vere, with powers that were almost royal in their scope. The selection was reported to a surprised Parliament as being made “in consideration of his noble blood, strenuous probity, eminent wisdom and great achievements.” It was stipulated that the conquest and unification of the sister island must be completed in two years and that the annual deficit must be corrected in the same period of time. These conditions made the position an onerous one to assume and there was a sly tendency to look favorably on the appointment as a means of demonstrating the incompetence of the young man in a most unmistakable way.